July 2018 Book Reading List

July has come and gone and I have finally - FINALLY - finished my master’s degree. I’m done with classes. I’ve yet to receive that piece of paper saying I’m done in the mail, but all that’s left is waiting. No more responsibility. That means I have more time for reading (and video games, and writing, and my wife and son - but of course not in that order!)

The last day of class was July 25th, so I didn’t have a ton of time to catch up on reading for the entire month. That said I did make sure to read one book.

Freedom! is Adam Kokesh’s book on libertarianism. It’s a free book, as he is anti-intellectual-property (no rights reserves, copyleft, that sort of thing), and I picked up a physical copy at the tail end of the Libertarian Party of Ohio’s convention. I wouldn’t suggest it as an introductory reading towards libertarianism. It uses what I call the words. The words are simply words or short phrases that movements tend to use that tend to invoke strong, conflicting emotion both inside and outside the group. For libertarianism and Mr. Kokesh’s books, these words include statism, corporatism, and taxation is theft. Examples of the words in another movement would include patriarchy and toxic masculinity for feminism.

Children’s Books

Of course, I made sure to make sure to read to my son. The book I read to him during July are:

• Newtonian Physics for Babies
• My First Book of Superpowers (DC Super Heroes)
• Pooh’s Best Day: A Book About Weather
• HTML for Babies
• I Love You As Big As the World
• First 100 Things That Go

There’s another book I read to him with the theme of goodnight. I can’t seem to find it or remember exactly what it was. All I remember is that I read it to him in the middle of the afternoon - it most definitely wasn’t time for goodnight!

HTML for Babies was an odd one. It isn’t really readable - it’s pretty much written exactly as it says, in HTML. I mean, it just feels odd to say div style color red.

I did think Newtonian Physics for Babies was pretty well done. It did follow some order. Essentially, it talks about the forces on a ball in much the same tune as “See Spot Run” (or is it Dick and Jane?)

All-in-all, it’s much easier to read a bunch of short books to the little guy than it is to read one book for me!